Gustav Struve

Gustav Struve (11 October 1805-21 August 1870) was a German revolutionary during the Baden Revolution in 1848. Struve was an important radical journalist, and he was one of many German revolutionaries who fled to the United States after the failure of the Revolutions of 1848. Struve briefly served in the US Army during the American Civil War, but he later returned to Europe and died in Vienna, Austria in 1870.

Biography
Gustav Struve was born in Munich, Bavaria on 11 October 1805, the son of a Russian diplomat. He studied at the universities of Gottingen and Heidelberg, and he served in the Oldenburger civil service from 1829 to 1831. In 1836, he became a lawyer in Mannheim, Baden, and he entered politics by standing up for liberal Badener politicians in news articles. He headed more in a radical democratic, early socialist direction from there, and he was repeatedly condemned to imprisonment as author of the Mannheimer Journal. In 1846, Struve was compelled to retire from management of the paper.

Struve was strictly against the conservative Klemens von Metternich's reactionary policies, and Struve and Friedrich Hecker took on a leading role in the Revolutions of 1848 in Baden. Struve pushed for a federal republic that would include all of Germany, but this was rejected by the Frankfurt Parliament. Later, he was forced to flee to Switzerland, and he was caught and imprisoned on 21 September 1848 after trying to start an uprising in Lorrach. In 1849, he was freed during another uprising in Baden, but this uprising was also crushed. Struve escaped execution by fleeing to Switzerland and then, in 1851, the United States, and he promoted German public schools in New York City.

In 1856, Struve supported Republican Party candidate John C. Fremont for the US presidency, and he supported Abraham Lincoln. During the American Civil War, he served in the Union Army as a captain under Louis Blenker, but he resigned rather than serve under Felix Salm-Salm. Struve never became a naturalized US citizen, as he felt that his primary concern would be to battle the despots of Europe. He died in Vienna, Austrian Empire in 1870.